what this blog needs is more posts about Rabelais
A person leaving the name SFP posted a comment on a recent post of mine, and I thought I'd re-post it here because it is just the sort of linguistic trivia I relish:
And while we're on a Spanish language kick: in 2004 I posted about the Spanish version of the Army's "An Army of One," and in 2005 about the Spanish words for "escalator" and "pregnant," and in 2006 about the Spanish word for "unicorn."
The Spanish for 'gargantuan' is 'pantagruelica'. Rabelais wrote about two giants, Gargantua and Pantagruel. We picked one giant, the Spanish picked the other.
And while we're on a Spanish language kick: in 2004 I posted about the Spanish version of the Army's "An Army of One," and in 2005 about the Spanish words for "escalator" and "pregnant," and in 2006 about the Spanish word for "unicorn."
posted by JenIsFamous at 1/29/2008 11:39:00 PM
2 Comments:
I heard an interesting story in my Internationl Marketing class back in college and I find myself reminded of it now. It is not about Spanish, nor actual translation really, but amusing all the same.
When Matchbox Twenty came out with one of their early albums they had a single called "Bent" that was very successful. So they decided it would be a good idea to make posters of the band that contained the work "Bent" in big letters. Then they went on a world tour and these posters were put up all over the place. Unfortunately for them, in England "bent" is slang for gay and in Australia it is slang for high. Needless to say, the locals totally got the wrong idea on that one.
The other memorable one was Microsoft's first attempts to sell products in Asian markets. They simply translated it directly and were very surprised when none of the Asian men would buy products from a company called "Small and Soft".
While we're discussing English-to-Spanish marketing:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/nyc-condoms-in-translation/index.html?hp
Enjoy,
M
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